Going Local

The Small-Mart RevolutionNational drug chains squeeze local pharmacies out of business, while corporate downsizing ships jobs overseas. All across America, communities large and small are losing control of their economies to outside interests. Going Local shows how some cities and towns are fighting back. Refusing to be overcome by Wal-Marts and layoffs, they are taking over abandoned factories, switching to local produce and manufactured goods, and pushing banks to loan money to local citizens.

Shuman details how dozens of communities are recapturing their own economies with these new strategies, investing not in outsiders but in locally owned businesses. These strategies include locally owned companies, import substitution, new community financial institutions, and smart local policymaking.

Selected as "recommended reading" by Utne, Social Policy and Tikkun. Also features a detailed appendix entitled “Around the World Economy in 80 Ways,” which has mailing addresses and other contact information for hundreds of organizations.

$18.00 per copy (plus shipping)


This book outlines a new brand of economics and politics that empowers local people to regain control over what happens to their communities.

—Utne

A brilliant synthesis of a new economics based on local self-reliance, community control, and renewed cyclical flows of regional capital. The good news contained within these pages is that the withering trends of corporate ‘growth’ can be transformed into expanding our capacity to meet real human needs. Every city or community, rich or poor, should making Going Local required reading for their employees, elected officials, and citizens.

— Paul Hawken
   author of The Ecology of Commerce

Americans don’t want a top-down solution for every problem, and they don’t need one, either. Michael Shuman makes the case convincingly. . . .

—Senator Paul Wellstone
   D-Minnesota

A constructive, clearly written book that counters blind globalism with insightful and responsible suggestions for how to root capital in viable, local communities

—Herman Daly
   University of Maryland

It would be hard to imagine a better book for two groups of people: ordinary Americans wishing to find a new way for their communities, and elected officials to bring such a future about.

—Richard Douthwaite
   author of The Ecologist

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